Jack let himself be held for a few minutes, before gently pushing the Doctor away.
"Been living linear since 1869, Doctor. 1978, this bit of coral-like stuff falls through the Cardiff Rift. My manipulator says there's something weird about it, time-related weird, so I take it back to Torchwood, set it on my desk. Then she starts singing to me, very faintly, but just like the old girl, and she starts growing. 2008, the next you comes by to visit me at Torchwood, sees my coral, gets angry about our Rift Manipulator. A couple of my team, you and me wind up going to the estate house. We find this poor, torn apart, hanging on to life girl, that my coral was once part of. She'd fallen through time, broken, been taken apart by hands that didn't have a clue what they were doing."
Jack broke off, still angry, after all this time, still hurting for both that TARDIS and what he and the Doctor had seen.